


you talk like a man and taste like the sun.

by ftwnhgn



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Slice of Life, they talk about nietzsche i am so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:53:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25813111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftwnhgn/pseuds/ftwnhgn
Summary: “What is it?” he asks, lowering the brush and turning in his chair so he’s sitting sideways on it and pays Nicky all his attention. Like a flower finding the sun to grow, or a planet finding another one in its gravitational orbit. Nicky doesn’t know too much about astronomy, not as much as he used to do anyway, but he thinks the metaphor works either way.“I think I am going to take some classes,” Nicky says.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 45
Kudos: 467





	you talk like a man and taste like the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> this is a very, very vaguely outlined college au thanks to a post i saw on tumblr about nicky enrolling in college once in the guard's downtime and being extremely cryptic and knowledgable in lectures he knows everything about already. and what with luca being so fluent in german and then in the movie we also see joe having a german passport that would have run out in 2024, i could not not do something with that either. so here it goes. i based the location on the idea of the setting being part of the cold war, but then i looked at joe's passport again and saw that he had it made in 2014, and thus i adjusted a little. 
> 
> there is also nothing i resent more and that amuses me more than the faulty german university system across the board. thanks to a friend's help here all the classes etc. mentioned were a real thing at the university nicky enrolls in for this fic. the rest of is kept rather vague. a little warning that people are talking about nietzsche here once, and i apologize for it, but we are keeping that vague too since i didn't want to turn this into a one of my own psychology class discussions on the main. make of it what you will either way.
> 
> translations for all the german can be found in the end notes!
> 
> note: beta'd by myself, all mistakes are yours now and i will probably come back to fix them. sorry in advance!  
> title: glass animals - helium

**i.**

They have a pool in the backyard.

It’s nothing as picturesque as the azure blue of the Mediterranean sea they both hail from or even as feverish in appearance as the Atlantic ocean, the coast of western France laden with modern history and bloodshed, but the concrete rectangle in its stark gray turns the water under the cloudless summer sky into something that has a similar air of invitation to it in the warm May sun.

Why they need a house with a pool in the backyard is unclear to Nicky as of now, but they had agreed that to lay low they’d try to blend in as well as possible this time around that they’d spent apart from the rest of the team. Andy wanted a break and they all agreed it seemed like a good idea, having spent the years beforehand on missions nearly back to back when not biding their time waiting for the next one in one of their safe houses.

Joe and him have decided to go to Germany, not having been there for a prolonged time since they met Andy in Berlin after the fall of the wall in the 1980’s, and with Nicky’s knack for the language and Joe’s knack for charming even the most sullen looking people to possibly give up their own houses and the clothes on their back for his sake if needed to, they have scored a small house with a nice backyard for the foreseeable future. It’s come fully furnitured with a bedroom and a small guest room, one of those places that were built during the _Wirtschaftswunder_ and some West-German politician’s family used to live in during the cold war and got furnished to meet the time’s design standards. Joe had a strong opinion on the kitchen cupboards when they finally got here this morning while Nicky was glad he didn’t need to cook on a gas stove. There also seemed to be an AC installed, at least in the upstairs rooms. Small mercies of recent times he’d not take for granted.

What the house lacks in some of its interior design that Nicky knows they might either just switch around with until it fits them, or Joe’s art will make up for in due time, the pool seems to be the sole reason why Joe chose this place for them.

Nicky turns to his partner, eyebrows drawn up. He can see the crinkles at the corner’s of Joe’s dark eyes even with sunglasses in the way. “What?” he asks, something feigning innocence in his tone, the smile on his face growing exponentially in reply to the own quirk of Nicky’s mouth. “Don’t say you hate it. I know you’ll thank me once the weather gets even warmer.”

He’s got a point there, Nicky thinks, knowing his love long enough that those were not his motives, but that there are some a little more ulterior at play. Nicky can’t be mad about it, he used to pick elaborately hidden and far-off places up and down the coast of Italy and France just to see the warm sunshine of August colour Joe’s skin a shade darker, turn him into something even more divine than he already was, something Nicky would have wanted to set in stone for eternity if he were more of the artist between the two.

It’s easy then, to reach over and kiss Joe once, lips warm and dry from the midday sun, and reply, “You can not fool me.”

Joe doesn’t even take a second to answer. “I never said I wanted to, my heart. You know how I like the view.”

Nicky can’t help but smile, knowing full well the person easiest so succumb to Joe’s charm is himself.

**ii.**

Joe starts to paint the wall of the kitchen in their first week, having pushed the small kitchen table out of the way and into the backyard through the patio doors the weekend prior. Nicky doesn’t ask when and where he got the paint from, thinking it must be when he spent his Saturday napping in the low grass in the backyard after they finally managed to get the few belongings they took along with them into their rightful places, their weapons stored safely in the bedroom closet, his gun under the pillow and another one for Joe under the mattress. It is what makes this modicum of relaxation possible, the reason why he could even do something as simple as doze off while Joe would leave for a bit in a place neither of them has been for quite some time now.

It was there that he decided he’d find something to do for himself for the coming year they planned to lay low here, and when Joe was beginning to turn the kitchen’s beige wall into a dense and intricate pattern of different greens, Nicky has taken the encrypted laptop Booker bestowed upon them to look around the web for the closest university and what classes they had lined up for the semester. He knows enrolling in the middle of the semester is usually tried to be prevented, but it wasn’t like he’d do it for anything but to occupy his mind and his time for the next months. He already attained several different degrees over his lifetime, when universities just began to open up to other people than the selected few of royal or prestigious descent up to the point when they began to hold courses in more than one language, and when the languages he learned early on in life and the things he witnessed became subjects to be studied and read about and not the most recent conversations to be had.

His earliest memories not spend with bloodshed were ones spent studying, holy scriptures and gospel and biblical stories to memorize and recite, to feel and relate to in the depths of his heart. Maybe this is why he reverts back to it, to the comfortable ease that comes with acquiring and testing his own knowledge, and seeing what the world has come to analyze and dissect this time around.

He finds the closest university that holds classes that interest him in philosophy and religion and after checking through the requirements finds the papers they had made for an opportunity exactly like this, and checks the terms for applying late. The university expects a fee to be paid, obviously, but it’s not outrageous so he feels sure in his decision.

Closing the laptop and pushing it off his thighs, he gets up and walks into the kitchen to find Joe in a kitchen chair with a concentrated look on his face and a brush in his hand as he seems to study his next move for their wall. There’s paint on the shirt he wears, an old one that already has numeral paint stains on it and that now spots several shades of green and yellow at the shoulder and the hem, similar to the ones on the inner side of Joe’s underarm. Joe looks up without missing a beat when Nicky enters his line of sight, an old habit that he never wants to die.

“What is it?” he asks, lowering the brush and turning in his chair so he’s sitting sideways on it and pays Nicky all his attention. Like a flower finding the sun to grow, or a planet finding another one in its gravitational orbit. Nicky doesn’t know too much about astronomy, not as much as he used to do anyway, but he thinks the metaphor works either way.

“I think I am going to take some classes,” he says and he doesn’t need to say the actual words _I think I want to get another degree_ out loud. Joe understands right away, nods and beckons him forward with a motion of his hand Nicky has seen a thousand times before. He follows suit easily, finding a seat on Joe’s thighs and putting one arm around his shoulders, hand splaying over the back of his shirt and not having to guess at the wet feeling that he just touched more paint.

“What will it be then, Nicolò? A venture into astrophysics _might_ overtake our stay. We all agreed on a year, not that I'd ever doubt your mind, ” he points out, his voice curling around the word _astrophysics_ in a way that has the frays of Nicky’s mind feel like something snapped and turned a light on. Something amused and sweet and bright, something only Joe can ever elicit in him.

His nose sits under Nicky’s chin, his mouth following a light trail of kisses at the sun-hidden skin there. Nicky’s hand around his shoulder grips him a little tighter there, not so tender as his lover’s affection. “Religion and philosophy. It’s four semesters, but I think I am using some of my old credits from last time, spare me some of the classes.”

“Religion and philosophy,” Joe agrees, the words a hum against Nicky’s skin in Italian, and the words leave more sweet trails in Nicky’s blood like this, making him lose focus a little as his palm finds Joe’s cheek and touches there briefly, running over his cheekbone with a knuckle, the line of his growing beard.

“Just to see what is being studied these days, to have something to do.” Nicky replies, slipping into their newest mutual language of choice. “I am going to enroll tomorrow. See what classes I can take.”

Joe lifts his head, looks up at him and his dark eyes are full with the tenderness and delight only several centuries together could bring alight in him, something that has resided there since the first time they took the choice of loving each other, living with and for each other, and that has found so much more depth ever since then. Life, even a nearly endless life, makes the time spent together so much sweeter, so much more precious. “You mean, to _correct_ all of them,” Joe says, a smile on his face now, private and infinite, his own hands low on Nicky’s waist and his thumbs rubbing circles into his hipbones where they hold him still.

Nicky answers him with a kiss, open and available, falling into Joe’s body so easily after all this time, so readily, something hungry sitting there in all the sweetness Joe keeps simmering low in him. He could never get enough of this man, not after close to a millennium and not ever. He knows it would have already happened if that were the case. But there is something about the comfort of their certain knowledge of each other, of knowing Joe’s body better than his own, of all the new ways he can still discover it and lay claim to it as well as being discovered and being claimed, a hundred ways to speak the words ‘ _mine_ ’ and ‘ _yours_ ’ without using their voices.

Studying, it seems, has always come easy to Nicky, no matter the subject.

“Yes,” he breathes, no need to lie about that, pulling Joe in by the back of his head to kiss him again, to diminish the unnecessary space between them. He can already feel the conversation slide sideways and to the floor, knows the paint might dry earlier than sun fall today. They always like to find the time for each other when they can — it has been a while since their last downtime, since Malta. “And what would be so bad about that?”

Joe looks at him then, time feeling as if it has found a standstill in the space between their noses, the rich pool of his eyes finding the specks of gold in Nicky’s, and then he exhales a laugh. A soft and breathless sound, something Nicky holds close to his heart, enraptures it every time all over again. The sound of _home_. “Nothing, my life, nothing.”

Nicky feels Joe’s arms go around him before they lift him up.

**iii.**

The campus is big and modern, one of those places that has more muscle than heart, more carbon than brick and more brick than wood, but he finds his way around after the first few weeks without much issue. Most universities are built the same way with their faculties in their own confined microcosm, making it easy for students to find most of their classes and cutting their transportation time short out of a need born from academical efficiency and honed with the practice only a society needing to overachieve could ever put forth.

It is all very _catholic_ , Nicky thinks several times, the self-importance of it. It seems to pollute the air in many West-German cities.

He ends up taking classes in evangelical and catholic theology, as well as philosophy. A lecture titled _Glaube und Vernuft_ , a course to brush up on his Persian, a seminar titled _Theorie und Praxis des interreligiösen Dialogs_ because there is something infinitely amusing about it, and a handful of others concerning the catholic church’s history on sexuality, Islamic art and aesthetic, one concerning figures and myths in the old testament, and one about the ties between colonization, migration and christianity — a few of those to correct the professors, yes, but some of those genuinely to see where the academical discourse currently lies and how he likes that, what he thinks of it, what he makes of it. Its moral center has been shifting since he first learned and unlearned the one he has been taught, and it has never stopped moving, usually towards a direction he did not like to see.

One class is in English and the others are in German, but he slips into the language smoothly after those first few weeks, listening to the lectures and getting through the required reading without much issue in the evenings when Joe and him are lying in bed and he still has some time, or over breakfast before he has to leave. He’s read a lot of the required literature already, a lifetime of education and religion clinging to his mind, and while some needs dusting off, a lot of it is still fresh in his mind, especially recent debates, and he doesn’t need long to recall things when discussions in the classroom about the reading begin, or when he knows the professors or lecturers miss something in their teaching, and he finds it even easier to raise his hand and correct them when needed to.

Most of the students are younger than him and very enthusiastic, several of them in the same classes as he is, some different faces in each of them every week but all of them ones he recognizes soon enough, knowing they probably are doing the same with him what with all the staring that happens whenever they come into the classrooms or lecture halls and already find him sitting at the back of the room. Some habits of his _own_ die hard too, and he likes to sit close to the exists, likes to have a view of the full room — his sword is stored away in their house, he does not expect to ever need it here, but there is a warrior in him that has died and yet survived each time, an old and trained thing that never finds rest, that never eases. Joe calls him a calm sea with a dangerous torrent beneath the surface, Nicky knows he is not far off.

But he does actually manage to let some of the tension drop of his shoulders, finding the curiosity and interest the other students show so obviously something nearly enchanting, something that brings a warm fondness to his chest at their readiness to learn and talk, to debate and understand, to see the world in new angles outside of the views they grew up on, and to defend some of the views they might still need to adjust or will learn to do so in due time, Nicky has no doubt about that. Growing up happens so fast and some of the students are so young, but most if not all of them are smart, taking pride in the education they can have, and he likes that too.

They have progressed past the introduction lectures he caught the tail-end of in most of his classes after a month, leaning away from the basic aspects of the theories and applying more historical and life context to those, and Nicky takes it gratefully, becoming more immersed in the subject matters even when he already knows them like the back of his hand, _especially_ then.

They are talking about the decline of Christian civilization as per Nietzsche’s own thesis, the French moralists part of the conversation for a few minutes in the classroom as well, and some of the students are arguing about the understanding of God in Nietzsche’s texts on the matter as well as his lack of faith therefor. Nicky listens to them all intently, listens to what their professor has to say as well, a man prone to boast Nietzsche’s view on the society he lived in at the time and its Christian values as not something he may adhere to from a religious standpoint, that of a believer, but as a necessary backbone for his thesis and the purity he sees in people's behaviour, or the lack thereof.

Nicky has never liked the man, Nietzsche that is, not when he was alive and neither after his death.

He raises his hand in a moment of silence after the class seems to have come to the conclusion that while parts of Nietzsche’s criticism were justified, mostly towards the halted progress of scientific achievements due to Christian morals, it didn’t make the harshness of his critique and his seemingly justified support of a nihilistic culture taking its place as prophetic, more something informed by Nietzsche’s general distaste towards any religious movements at the time. The professor looks up from his laptop screen and acknowledges Nicky with a nod to go on.

Nicky shrugs before he says, “Ein Mann ohne jeglichen Glauben sollte der Letzte sein, der uns unser Verständnis von Gott vorschreiben sollte, denn er selber ist nicht Gott — ganz gleich wie sehr er das wünsche. Oder denkt, dass er der Erste sein sollte, der es in Frage stellen kann.”

Afterwards when half of the class already files out of the room, a few people linger behind as he quickly packs up his own stuff, and when he’s by the front of the door he gets stopped by a group of three girls and one boy. He doesn’t tense, knowing their harmlessness immediately in their posture and having seen them take part in discussions in class a few times, but the feeling of being boxed in by anyone or anything that aren’t Joe’s arms around him never bodes well with him anyway.

He gives them an encouraging smile though, never wanting to put off anybody when they haven’t given him reason to.

“What you said back there in class was really cool,” one of the girls says, the one with olive-colored eyes that also sits in his class about colonization, and she beams up at him after her words, her friends nodding along.

Nicky feels a little bit put on the spot, the conversation in the room having stopped after he said his piece, the professor needing a minute to find his words again due to an inability to respond to something that Nicky has been mulling over and came to terms with several times in the past hundred years, and then directed the debate back to the french moralists, deciding to stay clear of Nietzsche for now.

“Yeah, it was like — it was profound, you know. Like, there’s good and bad in everything, and we gotta look at it from both perspectives, or more than both, and then we can decide what’s right and what’s wrong, instead of just taking somebody’s word for it,” the one guy in the group adds, standing behind all the girls in a way that mirrors Joe hovering behind Andy, Booker and Nicky after tedious mission in a sort of out-of-place but endearing way. Nicky can’t help but let the edge of his mouth quirk up at the image.

“I am glad what I said could give some insight. It is a lesson we all have to learn in life, sometimes many times over. Just like the people in this world need to do if they want to come to terms with their standing in it,” Nicky finally replies and when all four students look at him a little dumbstruck he knows he has probably taken it a bit too far. “My husband always says I can come on a little too strong when I get philosophical. I’m Nicky, by the way.”

That seems to break the ice, the girl that talked to him first beginning to laugh and the rest following suit, the corner of Nicky’s mouth going up a bit higher by its own accord. He thinks he is going to like the four of them.

“Nicky, hi. Nice to meet you. I’m Jasmin. Those are Mia, Inas, and the silent one’s Alexander.”

Nicky shakes all their hands one by one. “Alexander — like the II or The Great?” he asks the young man, who looks like he is turning more red with every passing second Nicky diverts his attention to him. But then again, he seems to do that whenever anybody looks at him.

“Van Helen, actually,” Alexander replies and Nicky only nods to put him out of his misery of having the attention on him, seeing how much it seems to stress him out. “Lovely. Do you guys have time for lunch?”

**iv.**

After finishing the kitchen, now a lovely palette of different shades of greens and yellows with the ceiling the color of olive tree leaves in the summer, Joe has moved on to work on the back porch, fixing the old wood there and already having painted half of it in a dark cognac colour. Nicky looks at the half-finished porch while he cooks their dinner on a Saturday evening in early July, the summer sun filtering in through the open patio doors and onto the stove where the curry is simmering on a low heat. He is only waiting for the rice to be finished cooking too, busying himself in the meantime with preparing the simplest of salads to serve alongside, nothing fancy but enough to sustain them until breakfast.

His hands are in the middle of slicing tangerines when he can feel Joe’s hand brushing his side, a greeting without words after returning from upstairs. He is usually like this after prayer, a little quieter for the first few minutes, and Nicky lets the calm of his presence wash over him, anchor him too in return. Now withbeing absent for some of his days during the week, he meets a new-found joy in the days they have just for themselves, where he can fall asleep to the steady presence of Joe’s chest against his back, their breaths in tandem, and wake up with it too, knowing he can lie for a few minutes longer while Joe gets up first.

The slowness of summer is creeping up and getting a hold of them too, here in a place with no haste and no missions on their horizon for the foreseeable future, and he likes to lean into it, the stillness of it all something they hardly get in their usual day-to-day life and that becomes all the more meaningful when found in their downtime. The heat helps in slowing things down, lazy afternoons by the pool that seem just as useful as Joe proclaimed they would be, mild evenings turning warmer when Nicky sits on the back porch either writing or reading things for the classes he takes, or the two of them sitting by the windows and talking the night away. He loves just being with Joe like this, reminds Nicky of some of the earliest years in their relationship when they spent their time traveling the ever-changing continent away from the battlefields, looking for the women they dreamed about and sometimes only just taking time to look at each other, at themselves, when the tenderness of getting to know each other for the first time was something golden, something shining and new, something they both wanted just as much even in the midst of guilt and reckoning that may have taken place inside of them.

Well, maybe it doesn’t remind him that much of everything that is now their past, at least not _that_ part of inner soul-searching. But the sweetness of nostalgia does paint a rather lovelorn picture for some of their shared years when it was just the two of them and their newfound love growing ever stronger into the existential and undeniable thing it now is.

The sliced tangerines find their way into the salad, and when Nicky turns around to bring it to the table he leans up and presses a kiss to Joe’s temple, his mouth forming more of a smile than anything else, and Joe returns it in kind. Placing the bowl in the middle of the small dinner table for now, he moves past Joe to sit down on what has become his side of the table while Joe sits down at his.

“This is really, really good,” Joe hums after they have already done good work of the salad and have moved on the the curry, and it lets some more tender vines grow around Nicky’s heart. There is something that always gets him about this, the two of them sitting across from each other in the quiet affair of dinner, and the way Joe makes it a point to genuinely compliment something about it and Nicky’s cooking skill severy time. Even when all Nicky could cook were recipes he could barely remember that his grandmother taught him with only half the ingredients available, even in safe houses that were nothing but barns with a place for a fire, even when it was just a quick meal to get their spirits back to life and get them through a mission. Even when it was only bread and meats, even then. Nicky thinks it’s another part of Joe’s poetry, this time maybe not a direct declaration of love but something as sincere and poetic as good old Shakespeare could come up with in his best of his times.

“The texture. _Ein Meisterwerk_ ,” he adds, a smile visible under the beard he is beginning to sport now more and more. Nicky likes it growing out, it brings back good, valuable memories — a fortnight in Oslo snowed in to their door but never cold or freezing while finishing a mission, a day and a night in Porto between a rooftop and a bad motel.

Nicky rolls his eyes, but indulges him because he always does so, because as much as he thinks they were born to help the world they live in, he was also born to love Joe to the best of his ability, and that includes to bring the warmth of his smile to the forefront of the view Nicky, and the world, has of him as often as possible. It works now too, bright and as wide as the sickle of the moon when it is clear in the night sky, how it used to be before the modernized cities and flooding lights found their way into architectural teachings. It reminds Nicky of home, no, it _is_ home.

“Your diction, _amore mio_. It’s coming along better than it did back in the eighties,” Nicky replies, his foot rubbing against the arch of Joe’s own.

Joe makes a noise at the back of his throat, something a little strangled, especially when Nicky’s foot makes its way up. They have all the time in the world today, they can eat dinner and play out the rest of the evening on their own terms. They can make it sweet, Nicky thinks he would like that tonight. Something to ease the burn of the spices at the back of his throat.

It would make Joe smile, his heart right there in the show of his teeth when he’d hover over Nicky, when he’d hold him as close as he can while they would move slowly and surely with each other, twin waves meeting the same shore, and Nicky’s teeth would find the curve of his shoulder up to his neck, and he’d leave his dents in the unmarred skin there for a few seconds. It would make him smile too.

“I’m not spending my days jump-starting a revolution this time,” Joe replies, so matter of fact that it has Nicky crack up a little, doing exactly so because of that.

Nicky’s foot digs into the bend behind Joe’s knee, staying there for a few seconds as he says, “Now. Did that all on your own, did you?”

“I am telling you, habibi. Leipzig _would_ have fallen without me. Don’t get me started on Berlin,” he answers, the mischief in his eyes oh-so telling, but something dark sits there too, something Nicky knows to understand better than the thoughts in his own head, one of the first things he ever understood about his Yusuf.

“I recall I was there too. Andy and Booker as well,” he retorts and he can see Joe stop with his fork in the air, tilting his head to the side, the flirtatious tone his smile begins to acquire letting something warm unfurl in Nicky’s chest, letting its threads fall into his stomach.

That smile, it still gets him after all this time.

“That is what you recall?” Joe replies immediately, his free hand going under the table and finds its way around the sole of Nicky’s foot, pads of his index and middle finger pressing lightly into the naked skin there. And then he winks.

If Nicky would not be feeling like his insides would turn into pool water at the newly placed touch, he would probably have the energy to roll his eyes again for good measure, to tease Joe a little. Now he blinks at his lover once, knowing full well the shift on his own face that is detectable in the way Joe’s grip strengthens around his foot. His thumb rubs against the side of Nicky’s foot in a slow line.

“That is what I recall — among other things,” Nicky settles on.

The smile Joe gives him this time is the same one he sees at the end of their evening a few hours later.

**v.**

Joe comes up a few times in Nicky’s classes, usually after having spent the evening prior talking with him about some of the subjects over dinner or afterwards, and Nicky has found that a lot of the people in his classes seem to be intrigued by the mention of his spouse whenever it arises.

Jasmin helps him out when he shares the revelation with her on their way out of the class only the two of them share. The young woman (and her friends) has grown on him ever since she stopped him on his way out a month ago, and now he finds her company refreshing whenever they share a lecture or are on campus at the same time. She reminds him of a weirdly serendipitous mixture of Andy and Joe, the former’s ancient spirit and the latter’s artistic vision residing in her at the same time, not to mention he world-changing streak she also seems to have going for her in spades.

They are walking next to each other into the July sunshine, another ninety minutes of Nicky’s life given to correcting a poor guest speaker on the topic of Christian knighthood, but one he would have come to one way or another anyway. He _does_ like correcting things, Joe wasn’t wrong about that, especially those that he knows more about from personal experience and has learned from for the same reason. Because he wants other to learn too.

“They seem to be quite curious about it, I don’t know why,” Nicky tells her when recalling the topic of their recent lecture once more, having talked about some of Joe’s own experiences on the other side of the discussed matter, raising several questions in the process of his answer again. His fellow students seemed to peak their heads when he mentioned his husband under the guise of knowing another expert on the topic.

Jasmin didn’t look, doesn’t do so anymore after having heard about Joe more than once already, never asking about the scholar-artist husband Nicky talks about a lot, but Nicky knows she takes note of everything that is being said and not said to her. She is smart like that, no wonder she reminds him of Andy.

“ _Nicht bös’ gemeint_ ,” she assures him in return, one of her hand patting his arm, and adds, “I think most of them just think you’re very — well, you don’t talk a lot in classes and when you do, it ends up being either something very _existential_ , or you bring up your husband a lot. And it’s not like you’re very sociable.”

“I am very sociable. I am being social right now,” Nicky intersects immediately, no irritation in his voice but more so wanting to state the obvious.

“No, I know,” Jasmin replies, “But I mean in classes, and general. You don’t take part in student activities, you’re a few years older than all of us, no one really has a clue about you. So people naturally get curious. I think your husband’s the most revealing thing you ever talk about, is all.”

Nicky looks up at the sky for a moment, cloudless and bright, a serene blue in the midst of a buzzing city. It calms him down, eases most of the tension out of his body whenever he does so. He doesn’t know what to say to that, has never been one for many words. That’s all Joe’s forte — Nicky just likes to bring his point across and be done with the rest. It’s never been an issue, not when the times he did spend attaining a degree was more linked to the written word anyway. His thoughts have always been straightforward and to the point, maybe not as harsh as he knows Andromache’s to be, but a path he could follow down without much hindrance or worry. It’s a leftover from his reciting of psalms, he sometimes thinks, the few words always profound in message and clear in their phrasing, to him at least. His words find a similar road to travel, their flourish something sharp and direct.

“Don’t worry your head about it, Nicky. I’m pretty sure everyone thinks your husband rocks and is, like, some secret super scholar that’s written half the books on eurafrican or eurasian history or something.”

Nicky looks back at her again, eyes squinting from the sun he was looking at a moment prior, and he can’t help the eternal tide of affection sweeping through him. When he looks away, he sees Joe standing by the bus stop across campus, a backwards baseball cap hiding most of his curls and sunglasses perched on his nose. When he finds Nicky looking at him, he waves.

“Oh, is that?” Jasmin asks and Nicky nods. She looks at Joe again, now with deliberate attention that Nicky can basically feel radiating off of her when she stops next to him. “ _Damn_ , he’s hot.”

Nicky nods, answers solemnly, “I know.”

“Like, you scored, Smith. Seriously, that’s your husband? I’d never go to another recommended student activity ever again if that would be waiting for me at home.”

That startles a laugh out of Nicky, ever-fond of her blunt honesty. “Thank you, Jasmin. I will let him know.”

She punches his arm in response, “You will _not_.”

After saying goodbye to her, he walks up to Joe, who kisses him soundly, both of his hands cradling Nicky’s face. As he pulls away, he can see the amused shine in Joe’s eyes as he asks, “What was that about?”

“Nothing,” Nicky tells him as they walk to the car and he slides his arm around Joe’s waist, feeling the need to do so, wanting to feel the strong line of his torso against his own. “My classmates all want to marry you. And meet you.”

Joe pulls his arm around Nicky’s shoulder in return, knocking their heads together a little. There’s a whistling sound coming from him before he replies, “Tell them I’m flattered to the next day and beyond, but I’m off the market for the foreseeable and not so foreseeable future. They are invited for dinner, though.”

**vi.**

The August sun is unrelenting in its heat and Nicky has used its descent towards the end of the day to spend his afternoon in their pool. The back porch’s finished and the lacquered wood glistens in the glass of the patio doors like a reflection of ship planks, reminding Nicky of Joe's and his first journey across the Atlantic. Joe’s begun working on their living room now, using the days he is not working on commissions for people to find them at least a new sofa after one of their sparring sessions put the old one to its grave when Nicky threw him over his shoulder, in a move Andy taught them years ago, and had him crash-land there to soften the fall.

The end of the semester is tangible on the horizon, mails in his university mailbox having dried up considerably and only a few seminars in their home-stretches. Nicky is expected to hand in papers in most of the classes he took, but he is still deciding if he wants to sign up for that or just take the past few months as a way to keep him occupied. He does want to have that degree though, something to mark another passage of their time in a fixed place no matter how short it may have been, another memory marked down in something real he can grasp. It is something he still has a week or two to think about, but he knows his decision in his heart already, just needs to decide what to write those papers on. He’s got an essay he wrote in the 16th century that could need a little finessing, translating and updating in terms of language that he could hand in, and another one he could write stemming from a mission in Tsaritsyn.

“What do you think about Tsaritsyn?” he asks Joe, who is dozing on one strip of concrete at the side of the pool, his one hand dangling in the water and his back a golden shade of brown that leaves Nicky a little breathless.

Joe turns his head and looks up at him, pulling his sunglasses off as well. “What about Tsaritsyn?” he asks in return, his hand in the water stilling its movements.

Nicky takes the few laps through the water to reach him, his arms coming up on the concrete, leaving rivulets that stain the gray darker in their wake. He follows them with his eyes before meeting Joe’s, the darkness of them a contrast to the bright sun above their heads. Nicky remembers falling in love with him like that — just them and the sun and nothing else between them anymore. It felt as organic as breathing then, when they finally worked through the resentment and misunderstanding and he worked through his own walls of religious guilt.

“ _Interreligöser Dialog_. I need to write a paper on it,” he tells him although he knows Joe knows about that. He has been bouncing ideas off of him ever since exam period started. Joe’s insight usually helps him see a bigger picture, or see things he hasn’t considered before, and it really is no wonder he mentions him as much as he does in his classes.

Joe reaches out and curls his hand around Nicky’s neck, his palm warm as he pulls him in a little closer. “Not a bad idea. Kazan Governorate?”

Nicky nods, leaning into the hand at his neck as contemplates the idea for a moment. “Sì, sì.” He leans forward and places a kiss against Joe’s shoulder, lets his mouth linger over the shifting ripple of muscle there, before he looks up at his lover. His mouth finds Joe’s neck next, leaning over the pool’s edge more as he nuzzles against the hot skin there. Not even the summer heat could keep him from this. His hand finds Joe’s back naturally, lying flat against his damp shoulder blade in the sun.

Joe watches him and he knows it, revels in it, and he doesn’t take long to kiss him languidly, taste of tangerines in his mouth and the smell of chlorine on his skin complimenting the underlying taste and smell that has always belonged to him and that Nicky has remembered as his own northern star, his understanding of refuge and peace.

He’s shameless with it too, kissing Joe as long as his lungs allow him too, licking into his mouth and bumping his teeth against Joe’s, something happy and possessive crawling through his veins at the act of it in this place they are residing in right now, in the backyard that Joe has made an oasis for the two of them for as long as they’d be here. It warms Nicky to the very core, infinitely, tenderly.

When they break apart, Joe looks at him with sweet devotion written across his face, the vines around Nicky’s heart responding in kind like they have been doing for the past years. “What?” Joe asks when Nicky doesn’t say anything.

Nicky kisses him again, loving the feeling of the sun being swallowed by Joe’s face up this close, loving the shadows he can hide under here in Joe’s neck.

“What is it, Nicolò?” Joe asks again, more curious than before.

Nicky breaks into a small smile, amused and wanting. “You know me, Yusuf, I just love the view.” And then he dives under and Joe follows him into the water.

**Author's Note:**

> translations:  
> Glaube und Vernunft - faith and reason  
> Theorie und Praxis des interreligiösen Dialogs - theory and practices of the interreligious dialogue  
> Ein Mann ohne jeglichen Glauben sollte der Letzte sein, der uns unser Verständnis von Gott vorschreiben sollte, denn er selber ist nicht Gott — ganz gleich wie sehr er das wünsche. Oder denkt, dass er der Erste sein sollte, der es in Frage stellen kann. - A man without any beliefs should be the last one to dictate anyone’s understanding of God, for he is not God either — no matter how much he wishes so instead. Or thinks he should be the first to raise his voice in question.  
> Ein Meisterwerk - a masterpiece  
> Nicht bös’ gemeint - not meaning any harm / no harm done
> 
> do i think nicky and joe would have hated nietzsche for some of the dramatic stuff he said and claimed? oh, definitely. maybe i am just projecting though. also no, nicky has never heard of van helen. joe probably has though. i also deeply adore the idea of them renting a place and joe absolutely turning it into a home for them as he did quietly as background noise throughout this. 
> 
> hit me up to talk about the greatest action movie ever made, idk, leave a comment if you want! I love to chat and I don't bite and I love to hear people's thoughts! either way, thank u for reading!
> 
> friendly reminder: you are loved, you are enough and you will achieve great things. you are right just the way you are, a living and breathing thing. keep going. i know times are tough right now, but you keep doing your best, you keep showing up for yourself and other people. thank you, thank you, thank you.


End file.
